- GP practice
Cookham Medical Centre
Report from 14 March 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
We carried out a focussed assessment of Cookham Medical Centre between 11 to 17 April 2024. We undertook this assessment due to the age of the rating because we had not assessed the service since February 2016. We reviewed 5 quality statements from the safe, effective, responsive and well-led key questions and found areas of concern. The scores for these areas have been combined with scores based on the key question ratings from the last inspection. Although the assessment of these 5 quality statements indicated areas of concern since the last inspection, our overall rating remains good. The service is currently rated good for all 5 key questions: safe, effective, caring, responsive and, well-led. During the assessment we found: The practice supported people from vulnerable groups to access care and removed any barriers that could create inequalities in experience or outcomes for people. Leaders were approachable and the culture in the practice was supportive. Staff conducted audits to monitor the effectiveness of systems and processes, but this did not work effectively in all areas. Systems to learn from incidents existed, but learning was not always shared promptly with all staff. The practice's system to act upon medicine safety alerts was not effective. People with long-term conditions did not always receive all recommended monitoring. We found 1 breach of legal regulation in relation to governance and have asked the provider for an action plan in response to the concerns found at this assessment.
People's experience of this service
To hear from patients about their experiences we asked the practice to share details of our Give Feedback on Care process. We received 3 pieces of feedback during the assessment period and reviewed 12 more of submissions which had already been provided by patients. People were generally positive about the quality of their care and treatment. Feedback provided to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) showed people found staff to be friendly, kind and understanding. People were confident in the care they received and felt staff were knowledgeable and compassionate. Patients could access care and treatment in a timely manner, although some people spoke of long telephone queues and difficulties accessing prescriptions. This was reflected in the practice's performance in the latest national GP patient survey, which showed the practice had performed above the national average for all indicators on patient satisfaction.